Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One whose business is to keep cows; a dairyman; a herdsman.
  • noun A person, in a city or town, who keeps stall-fed cows and retails the milk.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • At the commencement of the winter, a cow-keeper in the neighborhood told our man that we should give our cows a little mangel-wurzel.

    Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it Miss Coulton

  • Young Allen ran on, the soldier pursuing him, till he entered his father's premises, who was a cow-keeper, and _there_ the soldier shot him.

    Notes and Queries, Number 48, September 28, 1850 Various

  • His calling, with the interval of a brief military service in the fencibles, was the tending of cattle, in the several gradations of herd, drover, and bo-man, or responsible cow-keeper -- the last, in his pastoral county, a charge of trust and respectability.

    The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. The Songs of Scotland of the past half century Various

  • Is not the ant, therefore, entitled to be regarded as a cow-keeper, and are not the tiny little aphides his milch-cows?

    The Nursery, Number 164 A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers Various

  • And whether I am known by one name or another --- or whether I can draw a bow as well or better than a cow-keeper, or whether it is my pleasure to walk in sunshine or by moonlight, are matters, which, as they do not concern you, so neither need ye busy yourselves respecting them. ''

    Ivanhoe 1892

  • They say that Caedmon was a cow-keeper: but the shepherds of Theocritus and Virgil are figments of a courtly brain, and Wordsworth himself, in his boldest flights of theory, was forced to allow of selection.

    Style Walter Alexander Raleigh 1891

  • In Humphry Clinker (published in 1771), in the Letter of April 24, we read that there was 'a peal of the Abbey bells for the honour of Mr. Bullock, an eminent cow-keeper of Tottenham, who had just arrived at Bath to drink the waters for indigestion. '

    Life of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

  • On Wednesday, Jack went out again and hired himself to a cow-keeper, who gave him a jar of milk for his day's work.

    English Fairy Tales Joseph Jacobs 1885

  • As cow-keeper, Vergniaud, having a wife and three sons, being in debt to

    Repertory of the Comedie Humaine Part 2 Anatole Cerfberr 1865

  • During the Restoration he was, in turn, cow-keeper on the rue du Petit-Banquier, keeper of a livery-stable, and cabman.

    Repertory of the Comedie Humaine Part 2 Anatole Cerfberr 1865

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